Korea recorded 24 deaths caused by the Covid-19, the highest since Jan. 12 when 25 people died of the disease, after implementing relaxed infection control for the fourth day.
The figure also marks the largest deaths counted after the fourth Covid-19 wave began to spread throughout the nation in early July.
The pandemic has been spreading more widely due to the eased virus restrictions under the “living with Covid” policy, increasing the number of deaths. The country's daily death toll has kept rising from nine to 16 and 18 in the first three weeks of this week before reaching 24 on Thursday.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 2,482 new virus cases, raising the total caseload to 370,640. As a result, the accumulative death toll also increased to 2,916. However, the fatality rate remained unchanged at 0.78 percent. Although down 185 from Wednesday, the daily infection tally stood above 2,000 for two consecutive days on Thursday.
The health authorities said infections could keep rising over the next few days due to the aftereffect of the Halloween weekend, when people, especially younger generations, gathered up in a cramped place for the once-in-a-year party.
Since Monday, the government has allowed gatherings of up to 10 people regardless of vaccination but called for wearing a face mask indoors.
The health authorities, expecting newly confirmed cases to increase for a while, plan to focus on older adults and severe patients, learning from the examples of other countries that implemented “living with Covid” earlier where new virus cases increased for a certain period before falling back.
The government has fully lifted restrictions on restaurants, cafes, and movie houses. Still, it requires high-risk facilities, such as bars and nightclubs, to apply the vaccine pass system where visitors have to show they have been fully vaccinated or have a negative test result.
Health officials are also paying attention to an increasing proportion of the unvaccinated people in certain age groups, particularly younger populations.
As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 on Tuesday, health authorities also began discussing including young kids in the national immunization program.
"We will decide whether to give Covid-19 shots to 5- to 11-years-olds after the approval of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, considering the situations in other countries and domestic and foreign study results," said Kim Ki-nam, head of the KDCA's Covid-19 vaccination council.
The KDCA said that 75.9 percent of the country's 52-million population is fully vaccinated, and 80.5 percent received their first shots.
More than 70 percent of new Covid-19 patients have not been vaccinated, with 24 percent of them in their teens.